


In Progress

by rageprufrock



Category: Glee
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-11
Updated: 2011-09-11
Packaged: 2017-10-23 15:57:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/252168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rageprufrock/pseuds/rageprufrock
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kurt guesses it's because they're all in high school that despite all the abnormally high levels of drama and hormones, none of them consider walking away after sectionals.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Progress

The glee practice room, being probably the gravitational center of all of Ohio's baby-mamma related drama, bears witness to the Great Cry-In Of Aught Nine, the You Fucking Asshole She Was My Girlfriend You Were My Best Friend Debacle, the How Could You Lie To Me I Really Believed You About The Hot Tub Thing, and then several less-impressive revivals of the Great Cry-In, which were awkward and uncomfortable, since Quinn wept in a freakishly composed and beautiful way, and when Finn cried, it was ugly and snotty and made Kurt want to break out in hives.

Kurt guesses it's because they're all in high school that despite all the abnormally high levels of drama and hormones, none of them consider walking away after sectionals. They just keep showing up after school to scream at each other and tear at each other's hair and then text each other on their way home to talk shit about each other behind each other's backs. Mr. Schuster says it's a sign that they actually all care about each other, but Kurt has an operating theory that they've all just become addicted to the screaming; it's very liberating. He's had at least 45 percent less jawline acne since he'd lost it in the middle of a runthrough of If the Levee Breaks and hurled a folding chair at Puck, who'd said, "Holy shit, queerbag, if you were a lady and not a giant homo, I'd find that sort of hot," and started to treat Kurt with violent jocularity, which Finn had explained meant Puck now thought they were friends.

The morning after that, Puck still puts him in the dumpster, but he says, "Hey, hold up, you really like that pussy man-purse, right?" and grabs it from Kurt before the William McKinley High School defensive line throws him in with yesterday's spaghetti and a bunch of retainers. Later, they'll still slushee Puck, but for the moment, the social stratifications engendered within disparate degrees of being an outcast are clear.

"What the fuck is in here?" Puck asks, clutching at the bag, which is both Marc Jacobs and too good for Puck's filthy hands, while Kurt is climbing out the dumpster.

"Books, music, grooming supplies," Kurt tells him, and ascertaining he's presentable, snatches it away from Puck before he gets neanderthal all over it. "Thank you."

"Whatever, fag," Puck says graciously, and throwing one arm over Kurt's shoulder, drags him into the school in the most painful and annoying way possible.

Huffing, Kurt feels obligated to point out, "That's hate speech, Puckerman."

Puck's hair looks supremely disinterested. "Whatever, assmunch — reappropriate it or whatever," he suggests, and taking a half-second to leer at an overly tanned junior, he lets Kurt out of his extended noogie and tilts his chin up, saying, "I'm out."

"Wow," Kurt says, in front of his locker somehow and staring after where Puck has taken off down the hall, "it's like being hit by an Axe body-sprayed tornado of jackass."

***

Being friends with Puck is deeply, deeply strange.

For one, their interactions doesn't suddenly become comfortable or even incrementally less abusive, mostly, it restricts the shit Kurt is allowed to be subjected to within certain parameters that Puck finds acceptable. Being tossed into the dumpster, Puck justifies, is traditional and a morale booster for the football team; being bullied by assholes on the hockey team who think they can get away with punking on Puck's fellow singing, dancing queers is not.

"I think perhaps the fact that you persist on calling us singing, dancing queers is part of the problem, Puckerman," Kurt suggests, because he read in Elle once that in order to avoid nagging your man, present your complaints with a solution.

Puck just stares at him. "But you guys are singing, dancing queers."

Kurt purses his lips and looks over Puck's shoulder, where Tina has climbed into Archie's lap, and they're testing the structural integrity of his wheelchair, sucking face so hard Kurt thinks they should probably have a spotter.

"Leaving aside the unborn children Artie's expelling in his jeans over Tina as we speak," Kurt says, "for a bunch of queers we have a lot of teen pregnancy and you and Quinn and Finn all unable to talk to each other."

Puck elects to glower at him instead of responding, and Kurt, congratulating himself, abandons his perch at the piano and goes over to meet Mercedes in the parking lot. There's a trunk sale at one of boutiques downtown, and their extremely aggressive offensive plan requires two people with likeminded goals and enough trust to share a foxhole.

"Please don't tell me that your brief, ill-considered affair with that mineral face powder gave you some sort of brain tumor and you've developed a crush on Puck," Mercedes says, afterward, when they're counting their wins on a table next to the frozen yogurt shop in the mall, shirts and belts and stray earrings and bangles spangled around them.

Flicking his eyes up at her, Kurt says, "Bite your tongue."   
Mercedes considers a pair of gleaming silver hoops: fabulous. "Good, I was just worried. You've been talking with him a lot."

Kurt makes a face he'll blame for fine lines around his mouth in twenty more years. "Finn says Puck thinks we're friends now."

"That is damn tragic," Mercedes says, mild and amused, taking Kurt's hand and closing a trio of beautiful lacquered bracelets around the bone of his wrist. They're too-too, of course, dark red and black, all power colors and riotously inappropriate, but in a much more subdued outfit, they may be the standout accessories, and Kurt accepts them, defers to Mercedes's impeccable judgement when it comes to these sorts of things. "But I guess at this point the only people who like Puck are you and his mom."

"I'm not entirely sure I like Puck," Kurt says, and draping a green and purple paisley scarf around Mercedes's neck. "I don't know how I feel about that print on you."

She considers it with the seriousness such an issue deserves. "It's a bit twee."

"That's exactly what I feared," Kurt sighs. "But the fabric's ravishing."

On the way back from the mall, Mercedes's circa Jurassic period hatchback blows its fan belt, and Kurt strips her of her Express leggings — which he thinks is perfectly justified given that he's destroying his cuticles — and jury-rigs the car so they can get back to her house, at least, puttering with extreme caution down suburban Ohio streets, blasting Lily Allen, "The Fear," as loudly as her speakers can handle.

***

Kurt would scream at Mercedes for being a gossip, but it's one of the things he loves the most fiercely about her, and anyway, it's Finn who sidles up to him one day after glee practice and says, "Hey, could you take a look at my car?" so he doesn't mind that much. Kurt is completely aware he is weak and has a sickness, and that Finn has the intelligence of a slightly above-average golden retriever, but he's just so tall and muscly and distracting that Kurt's already elbow-deep in the car before he has time for regrets.

"I think you just desperately need an oil change," Kurt says, stripping off the mittens he'd appropriated off of Finn, because even though Finn is attractive in a red-faced, ruddy, and charmingly stupid sort of way, doesn't mean Kurt is going to subject his hands to auto repair twice in a week for him.

Finn, unblinking, says, "That's not bad, is it? I mean, expensive."

"It is both not bad and not expensive," Kurt translates, and Finn immediately looks so relieved and dopey-happy Kurt wants to do stupid things, like offer change Finn's oil in a nonsexual way.

"Oh, thank God," Finn breathes, leans back against the car like it isn't absolutely covered in filth and exhaust. To be entirely fair, Kurt thinks, it's not like filth and exhaust would significantly worsen the condition of Finn's clothes any.

"So, easy fix," Kurt says, because he's decided just now to exercise some self-control.

"Any chance you know how to change oil?" Finn asks, looking hopeful.

Kurt knows that his remaining years in Lima are going to suck, and that nursing an abortive crush on Finn is the sort of thing that turns into awful, all lower-case internet message board postings where the gay teen angst is so apparent Kurt can almost see the tearstains on the computer keyboard. So Kurt needs to lock this shit down if he's going to get through his remaining two years in high school, which is why, as soon as he's done teaching Finn how to change the oil in his car, he will get right on that.

"Kurt, did you just bring a boy home?" his dad asks, when Kurt comes into the shop looking for a drain pan, some gloves, and his emergency concealer he hid near a ratchet set. Burt Hummel looks like he'd rather be having a stroke. Kurt would rather his dad be having a stroke, too, sort of, than to have this conversation.

"I'm just teaching him how to change his oil," he says, and at his father looks out the opened garage door, to where Finn is trying to climb underneath his truck and keeps knocking his head against the tailpipe.

"Oh, my God," his dad moans.

"Like, actually changing his oil, Dad," Kurt promises.

"Because if this is — I don't know, some kind of date," Burt says, "I want to talk to him."

Kurt has a vivid and terrible mental image of how that would go. "Oh, sure," he lies.

"And by talk to him," Burt elaborates, "I mean hit him with this tire iron."

Sighing at the tire iron, Kurt says, "I gathered, Dad."

Burt spares one more suspicious glare outside. "I'll be right here," he warns Kurt. "Literally sitting right here. Watching you change oil."

"Your acceptance of my being gay translates into you treating me like a girl," Kurt muses. "Fascinating."

And before Burt can do anything like stomp outside and try to have a conversation with Finn — it's too horrifying to countenance — Kurt grabs the drain pan, grabs his gloves, grabs his emergency concealer, and heads back out for Finn's truck before he can concuss himself trying to find the oil cap.

***

"Dude," Puck counsels the next morning, holding Kurt's kate spade and frowning at it in wonder, "this is a lady's purse, buttmuch."

Kurt, extricating himself delicately from a number of used dust rags and a couple of industrial garbage bags from the cafeteria, says, "It's of practical size and design for a modern woman — stop pawing at it."

Puck gives him a disgusted look. "You know you're not actually a girl right?"

Deciding that ignoring stupid questions like that is the only way to deal with them, Kurt hums some Tina Turner to himself and starts the process of hurdling the high edge of the dumpster. Puck, because apparently he can accidentally be a gentleman, hands him down, and Kurt, because his pride does not outweigh his desire not to fall on his face in the parking lot, lets him.

"So I hear you changed Hudson's oil yesterday," Puck leers.

Kurt gives him the look that deserves. "Not a euphamism, Puckerman."

"Dude, call me Puck," Puck says, easy, and Kurt tries not to think about why that's weird in his mouth and makes perfect sense in his head. Sophomore year's been extremely trying so far: he threw the diva-off; he's on the football team; he changed Finn Hudson's oil; Noah Puckerman thinks they're friends. "Seriously, Hudson?"

"What's wrong with Finn?" Kurt asks, even though he has like a 45-minute answer to that question himself. It's one thing when he casts aspersions on Finn's intelligence, at least he does it out of love. It's another entirely when Puck does it.

"What, aside from the fact that he's embroiled in the worst will-they won't-they of all time with — " Puck holds up his free hand " — count 'em, Hummel: Rachel, who is irritating as shit, but a hot Jew girl; Quinn, who is hot, and fucking mean — "

"And having your baby," Kurt snipes.   
" — and somehow still likes Hudson," Puck concludes. "Why don't you go for an easier target?"

Kurt clutches his bag close to his chest and resist the urge to stab Puck with his emergency tweezers. It wouldn't do to lose control of himself so completely, and yet, the joy he's sure he'd feel at watching Puck clutch at his face, run screaming around the school is so bright he can almost taste it on his tongue, like Splenda, or looking thinner than that bitchy girl in second period.

"For your information, Puck, I'm not interested in dating," Kurt lies. He's good at it. He's been telling himself this since he realized that if he went to prom, he would have to wear something boring, and also, that Finn Hudson would not be taking him.

"No fucking way," Puck disagrees. "All the porno ads say gay dudes are total sluts."

Thankfully, a passing member of a cooler social echelon slushie's Puck, and Kurt calls out, "Thank you!" after the girl, because any longer trapped in that conversation, and the jawline acne would have been back. No amount of chair-throwing could have prevented it. The next morning, after the football players scatter leaving just Puck hanging around, holding Kurt's bag and waiting for him to climb out of the dumpster, Kurt asks:

"Wait a minute, so, are you and Quinn like, together now?"

"Hell if I know," Puck mutters, watching Kurt brush himself off.

"Wow, you're oddly serene and clear-skinned for someone living in these circumstances," Kurt marvels.

Puck gives him a suspicious look. "Is that gay for a compliment?"

"I am also amazed at how obvious all the years of head trauma from football are," Kurt sniffs, and takes a hard right to meet up with Mercedes for their morning exchange of vital social currency in the form of gossip and bullying passer-by freshmen into developing bulemia. He blames Puck for the entire enterprise being less satisfying than it usually is.

***

"I took a survey," Mercedes confides. "At least half the school things you and Puck are going together."

Kurt promptly chokes on his Tab. "What?"

"I'm rounding up," she admits, but still looks concerned. "Like, almost the entire freshman class things you two are a couple. You either need to scale it back, or hang out with Finn more to equalize it."

"I don't think the popular girl principle works with gay boys, Mercedes," Kurt manages, dabbing at his black t-shirt and whispering prayers to the high priests of Karl Lagerfield that drove him to wear black today. If it weren't for Michael Kors's bitchy Lifetime spot yesterday, Kurt would have worn a peasant shirt, just to be cute about it.

"Is that the principle about you calling them sluts for hanging out with all the cute boys or the principle where people can't tell who they're dating," Mercedes asks, too innocent.

"You're not as funny as you think you are," Kurt snaps at her.

She waves a hand dismissively. "Honey, you know I'm hilarious," she says. "Anyway, I'm only telling you this for your own good: congratulations, your high school fate is linked with Puckerman's."

"That is totally ridiculous and completely untrue," Kurt says, and he maintains that position until football practice after school, which he spends most of on the sidelines examining the endless conundrum of his trig homework and his cuticles — he's tried so many things, why are they so dry? — wondering what the hell they're going to do at glee practice tomorrow other than cry all over each other's babydaddy drama, at which point Coach Tanaka comes up to him and says:

"Hummel, you know the rule, right?"

Kurt blinks at him. "Is this about steroids?" he asks.

"No," Coach says. "If you have steroids, for freak's sake: take them. No, this is about pre-game intercourse."

Pursing his lips, Kurt says, "Coach, between all the pregnancies and the fact that the entire team is just sitting around watching Puck and Finn beat on each other — " Tanaka turns around and cusses, because seriously, that's what the entire football team is currently doing " — I think like, pre-game intercourse discussions are a little tardy."

"I meant you and Puckerman," Coach snaps at him. "I need you guys mean. And tense. For the game. So I'm serious: no fooling around."

"I'm sorry," Kurt says, earnest. "I think I seriously just threw up in my mouth."

"Throw up wherever you want," Tanaka encourages. "Just no bang-bang."

Kurt glances over at the field, where Finn is now making Puck lick his cleat; Kurt's so ashamed that he's attracted to any part of this.

"I'll try to contain myself," he says, and reaches for his iPod.

***

They're still working on If the Levee Breaks in glee club the next day, and Mercedes and Tina and Brittany and Santana are meditating on something sweet and light and heavily-choreographed with Mike in the corner that no one else is invited to until it's ready. Kurt can appreciate wanting something to be perfect before presenting it, so he respects their decision, except it leaves him with the options of either watching Artie watch Tina, watching Rachel watch Finn, watching Quinn watch Rachel watch Finn, watching Finn watch his own feet, or watching Puck staring at Quinn in between checking out Rachel and looking back at Kurt to mouth, WHAT, DUDE? WHAT?  
 It lasts until Mr. Schuester comes in, looking way, way too happy to be a Spanish teacher in Lima, Ohio, and plops down next to Kurt.

"Kurt, my man, how is your day going?" he asks, holding up a hand.

Kurt ignores it. "I'm reflecting on the futility of adolescence."

"Ah, that," Mr. Schuester chirps, watching everybody in glee club fondly, like half of them don't hate each other, haven't accidentally hooked up, or like Quinn isn't about 800 months pregnant and clearly bitter about the entire enterprise. "Youth, Kurt. It's great."

Kurt hasn't been gay and alive long enough to shore up a look of disgust worthy of that comment, but he tries, extremely hard. "You cannot be serious."

"I am," Mr. Schuester enthuses, thereby confirming Kurt's hypothesis he's late for practice because he'd been in the art room huffing paint. "Look at you guys! You guys are great."

"We're social pariahs desperate to get out of Ohio through show choir," Kurt answers flatly. "That's the baseline. I'm not even including all the teen pregnancy and theft and bullying and crazy."

"But you all will get out of Ohio," Schuester says, grinning, like he seriously buys what he's selling. "And you're all young. And I have faith that Quinn and Finn and Puck will figure it out, and Rachel will mow down somebody on Broadway and you'll go to Julliard and everything is going to be golden, Kurt — you'll see."

"You told us not to drink before school," Kurt says suspiciously.

"It all looks so dire when you're sixteen, doesn't it?" Mr. Schuester says kindly. "The only piece of advice I can give you that might actually stick, Kurt?"

Frowning, Kurt says, "Right?"

Mr. Schuester winks at him. "It'll pass," he promises, and before Kurt can exercise his chair-throwing arm again, Mr. Schuester gets up, like he's imparted some fabulous wisdom or something, and whistles for everybody's attention.

"It'll pass," Kurt spits out behind Mr. Schuester's back, but then there's the thud of Mike flipping over one of the chairs and Kurt gets distracted over the possibility of head trauma and he doesn't know it yet, but next week, he'll develop an actual crush on Puck (long term exposure, it'll pass, probably) to go along with his imaginary relationship, and maybe he will even go on a date with someone.

But right now, seriously, Mike is bleeding out of his face and Kurt will just have to address the issue of Mr. Schuester being totally full of shit at some later date, because seriously — this is being a teenager, this never passes.


End file.
